Corrugated paperboard is typically used in many different applications, for example, to form containers, boxes, cartons, or dividers for holding, storing or shipping various items such as agricultural produce.
Typically, such containers have a bottom and four side walls, and are formed from a blank scored with score lines or cut lines. The blanks are most often formed by automated machines in a continuous in-line process involving scoring and cutting a large substrate of paperboard into blanks of a desired configuration. During scoring and cutting, multiple, virtually identical container blanks are contiguously formed on a large, single substrate of paperboard. The automated machines separate the substrate into individual blanks by severing common intermediate cut lines with cutting knives. The resultant individual blanks are then folded along the score lines or cut lines to form functional containers. The blanks may be folded into a container manually or by an automated machine.
An individual container blank, on its own, often contains knife recesses or other cut out formations along the outer edges of the blank. However, during severance from a large paperboard substrate, the outer edge of the blank borders a virtually identical blank along an intermediate common cut line. In these circumstances, the die cut recesses or other cut out formations touch each other across the intermediate common cut line, essentially forming a combined cut out shape. For example, a blank may include dove tail locks, which are recesses having a flat base and two angled side walls that extend from the base to an open mouth top at the edge of the side wall, and may further have identical recesses on an opposing side edge. When this happens on contiguous blanks on a larger paperboard substrate, the open mouth of the dove tail lock on one blank will border the open mouth of a dovetail lock on an adjacent blank. As a result, the two bordering locks form a single, larger cut out shape that traverses the intermediate common cut line. When the blanks are fully separated across the intermediate common cut line, the individual blanks once again have separate dove tail locks.
However, to account for the thickness of the blank's panels when they are folded over one another during the formation of the container, the recesses cut out of one end of a blank are sometimes offset from the recesses on the opposite end of the blank by moving one recess a small lateral distance as opposed to the other. For example, the dove tail lock on one end of a blank can be laterally spaced ⅛ inch from a dove tail lock on the opposing edge. Stemming from that offset, when the blanks are arranged adjacently on a single substrate, the dove tail locks on one blank are offset from the bordering dove tail lock on the adjacent blank. That is to say, the open mouth top of the dove tail lock on one blank does not perfectly align with the open mouth top of the adjacent dove tail lock. This results in a combined cut out shape having sharp angles of less than 90°, called pinch points, which are undesirable because they are difficult to properly cut, leaving frayed edges and causing extra wear and tear on the cutting knife.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a paperboard blank that eliminates pinch points when aligned with an adjacent, identical blank on the same paperboard substrate.